Tue 25.2.

Montreuil, France based architects archi5 have created a modern library, la Mediatheque Mont de Marsan, for the Marsan urban community in southwestern France. A large square with a transparent facade and a planted roof, the Mediatheque features a unique open patio at its centre, “the volumes of which recall Alvar Aalto’s vases” – the first patio used by a Media Library as an open reading room.

Fri 2.12.

The University of Chicago's Mansueto Library by Helmut Jahn; photo courtesy of the architect

In The Time Machine, HG Wells wrote: “there is a tendency to utilize underground space for the less ornamental purposes of civilization.” In that book, Wells imagined a future in which industry had been completely located underground, whilst above ground all was green and leafy. At the end of the 19th century, it was perhaps understandable to imagine a future where this was the case. After all, as Wells put it, referring to the working class areas of London: “Even now, does not an East-end worker live in such artificial conditions as practically to be cut off from the natural surface of the earth?”

The development of writing in ancient Egypt also gave rise to the first libraries as places of storage for these witnesses to a new, revolutionary cultural technology. However, the library was not just a collection of cultural treasures but also a place where the entire knowledge of the state was concentrated, a central collection of important information. (more…)

Taking their cue from the 19th-century Parisian Bibliotheque Nationale designed by the famous rationalist architect Henri Labrouste, Kazumi Kudo and Hiroshi Horiba, the architects and founders of the Tokyo-based Coelacanth K&H Architects have realised this public library located in the capital city of Ishikawa prefecture, Kanazawa. The one-storey building, described by its designers as a ‘cake box’, has been completed earlier this year and its most distinctive feature, the intricately-detailed white concrete façade encompasses around 6000 circular windows that fill the building’s integral part, the 12-metre-long reading room, with a ‘soft, uniform light’. (more…)

The Strasbourg based practice Dominique Coulon Architecte recently completed this new multimedia library in Anzin, a small city in the very north of France. The building’s facade is characterised by multifaceted openings, flaps and folds and large veils that reflect the light into the inside.

Within the ‘1:1 – Architects Build Small Spaces’ exhibition at the V&A in London the Norwegian practice Rintala Eggertsson Arkitekter realised this wooden structure, a temporary, intimate, little library, in the middle of the stairwell that leads to the museum’s first-floor National Art Library.

Now after having dismantled the ARK booktower Rintala Eggertsson Arkitekter are currently looking for someone who might be interested in it.

The Florence based architectural practice Archea Associati recently finished this monolithic concrete ensemble for the new public library and an auditorium in Curno, north of Milan.

Curno Public Library and Auditorium, photo by Pietro Savorelli

“The project is located inside a larger area, meant to be a school and community services complex, and posits itself as an element generative of a different dimension of public space, capable of designing a new square, a contemporary theater and its extension and stairs, is a reinterpretation of the traditional cavea: a space for meditation and observation.
The project, which covers about 2,000sqm, is a monolith of concrete pigmented with iron oxides, completely decorated with a bas-relief engraved with the letters of the alphabet. The main image in the perspective, which looks towards the square, recalls that of an open book whose words, engraved in the pages, enrich and give identity to the bare surfaces of the cement.”

Curno Public Library and Auditorium, photo by Pietro Savorelli

“The structure, divided by a long corridor bounded by a concrete double wall, visually connects the square to the back of the middle school and identifies two distinct parts that contain within them the main functions: the Auditorium and the Library. The presence in a single building of two distinct functions is obliged to maintain compliance with fire prevention regulations, a clear separation between the two activities, providing them with a zone-filter. The central corridor constitutes the true backbone of the project with structural as well as plant features, while the two concrete 40cm walls make up the carrying structure for the Auditorium cover, for that of the reading room, as well as accommodation for the air-conditioning system, and the distribution of electricity and fire prevention system.”

Wed 23.12.

The Amsterdam based Studio JVM created this interior design for a newly designed villa that was carved out of a mountain wall in the village of Vals in Switzerland. This special villa, designed by the renowned architectural firm SeARCH in collaboration with Christian Müller architects, has only one visible element which is an elliptical patio, manifest as a circular hole in the steep mountainside. Studio JVM designed a vault like library cabinet made from cardboard.

'Hidden Lines' by Studio JVM

'Hidden Lines' by Studio JVM

Here is what the architects explain:

„By materializing the invisible lines that define the very conditions of this house (the contour of the mountain, and the radials of the patio) a 3-dimensional cardboard matrix is created. Two typical chapel-like volumes are carved from this matrix. The cavities created are the bedroom and bathroom now enveloped by a 3 dimensional library cabinet. The idea was inspired by the medieval painting ‘St. Jerome in his study’ by Antonello da Messina. Like this painting, the cardboard-carved “inverted chapel” becomes an autonomous space, which -like the mountain house-reversed- materializes in the genius loci of the house. Lightweight cardboard sandwich panels were directly CNC-carved from the design files. In 2 days the cardboard space was simply pieced together by the design team.”